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Estonia

Estonia has around 1.35 Million inhabitants and the number of flats currently amounts to 638,000. This results in a rate of around 472 flats per 1000 inhabitants, which is a rather favourable quota compared to other Eastern European countries. 70 percent of the housing stock is located in urban areas.

The privatisation of flats in the multi-storey building stock started in 1993 with a so-called “housing reform”. The legal basis was the “Law on Privatisation of Dwelling Rooms” from 1992, which introduced special national capital vouchers as means for the sitting tenants for buying the flat without cash. When in 1994, 74% of all dwellings belonged to the state or to local governments, then by early 2002, the respective figure was only 4.2% (0.7% state-owned, and 3.5% local government owned). As a result of living space privatisation (and to a lesser extent, of their return to their legitimate owners), the share of the privately owned housing stock has meanwhile risen to 95.8% of all living spaces.